>> pelley: steve hartman proves that he does "on the road". >> merry christmas! captioning sponsored by cbs pelley. this is the "cbs evening news" with scott pelley. >> pelley: good evening. erspelley: good evening. when the supreme court alters ed icourse of the nation, names are etched in history. ralessy v. ferguson" endorsed inial segregation; "brown v. board of education" ended it in hat ation. today we learned that the next name to make civil rights history may be "hollingsworth v. willy." her court said it will hear the case which could decide whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. the case centers on a ban on 20me-sex marriage that was passed by california voters in 2008. john blackstone has our lead from san francisco. >> reporter: for five months in 2008, same-sex couples in california could marry legally. then voters passed proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. when gay couples challenged prop 8, both the state supreme court and the federal ninth circuit court of appeals ruled that banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutiona